Need help on an assignment to make a decision on car rental alternatives

Hi All,

I really need your help!

Please see the below questions.

Rent a car. The two popular rental car companies in town are Goldee and Supreme. Goldee charges $195.99 per day plus $0.85 per kilometer, and Supreme charges $175.99 a day plus $1.29 per kilometer. You are taking a trip upcountry and will need to rent a car.


a. Construct a spreadsheet model to analyze the two choices. Sketch the Influence diagram of your model.


b. It is likely that this trip will span 3 to 5 days and involve a significant amount of driving. Which company should you go with? Explain your choice.


c. At what travel distances will you be indifferent to either rental company? If the trip is longer than 5 days, will the indifferent distance be longer or shorter?


For part a) I have created a spreadsheet model with the distance kept constant at 180km every day. ( is this correct? or should i change the distance to vary everyday? (I have tried both methods in keeping the distance constant and varying the distances. However, I have not used functions but just basic math to calculated using excel by (no.of days x day rate + no. of distance x dist. rate) to get the total charges of using both Goldee and Supreme. (If there is someone that can teach me how to use data table to tabulate the answers out it would be great! I do not know to pick what for the reference cells for the data table as my answers when I tried to reference the original rates, the data table generated is wrong, when I compare the answers to those i calculated manually or is data table meant to be used in such a case?

Part b) I have chosen Goldee if only for 3 days and Supreme for for 4 days or more based on my tabulated answer in part A when comparing the results of my calculations.

Part C) I used goal seek to find the price to be indifferent to both companies when the price is set to 0 to see what is the distance. But I don't think that is the correct method. I also tried to compare the two tables of values that I have tabulated out above and wrote that assuming that the price difference between both companies differ by $10 at a certain day and distance, I will take it as it being indifferent as to whether to choose Goldee or Supreme. But I am not too sure if i can just use assumption to actually come out the answer? or is there actually a method to calculate this out with a formula?


Thank you!!!!

Nothing is more frustrating than to be working on homework and to get stuck. Without guidance, you might have no hope of finishing the assignment before the deadline. The Internet can be a big help in that respect, but without learning how to get the right answer, asking others to solve your homework questions for you simply becomes a downward spiral (and it's cheating).

We do not want to contribute to you cheating yourself out of your education, but we also acknowledge that seeking assistance to learn a concept is a legitimate request.

If you are genuinely interested in receiving help in the form of tutoring or coaching, then please rephrase the title of your original post to clearly indicate you are seeking coaching or tutoring help. Any forum members (who are willing to assist as a tutor) will modify their responses accordingly to facilitate your learning. Tutors don't tell you the answers, they help you figure it out for yourself; so don't expect answers, expect suggestions, or just plain hints. Also, be specific in describing the function/formula or technique you trying to learn, and tell us what you have attempted so far. Otherwise, expect your plea for homework answers to be ignored.

I have taken pity on your because this is your first post. I improved your title to add a little about what kind of problem this is. As alansidman has described, we do not do homework for people, but we can help people get over a hump if they are stuck on a particular point.

I am willing to help because it appears that you have actually done some work to get started and do have specific questions. However, please attach your file so we can see where you are (instructions below).

The key tricks to this problem:
1. There is a daily cost plus a distance cost, and they are completely independent. That's why for some trips Goldee will be cheaper, for some trips Supreme will be cheaper. It all depends on the trip.
2. They have not given you firm parameters. You only know that it's "likely to span 3-5 days" and involves a "significant amount of driving." I would suggest creating a table of scenarios that look like this. Expand the "likely" 3-5 days to be 2-6 days, and distances ranging from 500 km to 1400km (make up your own numbers):

	2	3	4	5	6
500
700
900
1100
1300
1400

You would have two versions of this table, one for Goldee and one for supreme. You already understand how to set up the formulas--each square in your table will have the total price for that trip for that rental company. Does this help?

There are ways to set up multiple scenarios using Goal Seek or Solver, but I think that's overkill for this problem, and because you need several scenarios, not just one. Using these tables will quickly show you the best choice for each scenario all at once.

To attach a file:

1. Under the text box where you type your reply click the Go Advanced button.
2. In the next screen look above the reply box and click the "paper clip" icon. You will get a pop-up screen.
3. In the pop-up, click Add then Select to select a file from your local drive
4. Click the Upload button to upload the file
5. Click Done to attach it.

It will be displayed as an attachment underneath your post text. Alternatively as the last step you can click the Insert Inline button and a hyperlink to the file will be inserted directly into your post text in the spot where your cursor is set at the moment you click the button.

Here are step-by-step instructions with screen shots

The brake even price for 1 day driving is 45.4545 km/day do less than this and Supeeme is the cheapest choice.

So if the average daily distance is greater than 45.45 km then Goldee is the cheapest solution for any number of days, if less than 45.45 then Supreeme will be the cheapest choice as the number of days don't matter when celecting what company to hire from just the distance i.e. more or less than 45.45 km.


Alf